In 1959, Sokal moved to the
University of Kansas where he developed—initially in collaboration with
Charles Duncan Michener—quantitative techniques for classifying organisms and building dendrograms, which later came to be called
numerical taxonomy methods. At the
State University of New York, Stony Brook, in collaboration with
F. James Rohlf, Sokal worked on new statistical methods for the analysis of geographic variation. His interests shifted to
anthropology and
population genetics, and he directed studies on the population history of
Europe as inferred from genetic and ethnohistorical data. Along with
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Sokal pioneered the comparative study of linguistic and genetic variation.
Sokal R.R. (1988) "Genetic, geographic, and linguistic distances in Europe." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 85:1722-1726.
Barbujani G. and Sokal R.R. (1990) "Zones of sharp genetic change in Europe are also linguistic boundaries." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 87:1816-1819.
Sokal RR, Oden NL, Wilson C. (1991) "Genetic evidence for the spread of agriculture in Europe by demic diffusion." Nature 351:143-145.
Chen J, Sokal RR, Ruhlen M. (1995) "Worldwide analysis of genetic and linguistic relationships of human populations." Human Biology 67:595-612.
Barbujani G, Sokal RR, Oden NL. (1995) "Indo-European origins: a computer-simulation test of five hypotheses." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 96:109-132.
Sokal R.R., Oden N.L., Rosenberg M.S., Thomson B.A.(2000) "Cancer incidences in Europe related to mortalities, and ethnohistoric, genetic, and geographic distances." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 97:6067-6072.
Selected scientific bibliography (books)
Sokal R.R. and Sneath P.H.E. (1963) Principles of Numerical Taxonomy. Freeman & Co., San Francisco
Sneath P.H.E. and Sokal R.R. (1973) Principles of Numerical Taxonomy. Freeman & Co., San Francisco
Sokal R.R. and Rohlf F.J. (1987) Introduction to Biostatistics. Freeman & Co., New York
ISBN978-0-7167-1805-5
Sokal R.R. and Rohlf F.J. (2012) Biometry. 4th ed. Freeman & Co., New York
ISBN978-0-7167-8604-7
Stefan Schomann: Letzte Zuflucht Schanghai. Die Liebesgeschichte von Robert Reuven Sokal und Julie Chenchu Yang. München: Heyne 2008.
ISBN978-3-453-15260-1. (Paperback: Der große gelbe Fisch.
ISBN978-3-453-64525-7)
David L. Hull: Science as a Process. An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1988.
ISBN978-0-226-36051-5
Michael A. Bell.
"ROBERT REUVEN SOKAL: 1926–2012"(PDF). Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University. Archived from
the original(PDF) on 14 July 2012. Retrieved 25 May 2023.